Know Your Enemy Part 2 – On Page Assault

In the previous know your enemy, we looked at finding keywords that are relevant to your business. We then discussed using those keywords to find out who your competitors are. These are two great ways to size up your competition and ensure that you are going about your SEO campaign the correct way, finding lucrative keywords with not too much competition and then building your website accordingly. Next we need to look a little deeper into the competition. You need to ask yourself 3 questions:

• What are they doing right?
• What are they doing wrong?
• What can you do to improve on them?

When analyzing a competitors website there are a few things you should look at. Firstly, look at their META tags. If you are unsure about what META tags are, read this. See if they have their primary keyword in their title tag. What does their description say? How many keywords do they have in their keyword tag? If there are too many, you can better this by putting 3-7 keywords that are extremely relevant to your website.

Look for H1 etc. tags. Are there any? Are there too many? This will give you a good idea of what they are doing to rank for your keyword. Next look at their navigation. Is it clear to the user and search engines what the purpose of it is? If so, can you see a way to improve on it for your own website?

Look at their URL’s. Are they keyword rich? You will need to make sure yours are to give you that extra edge in the SERP’s. There is no point in having unfriendly URL’s. There are two problems with them. Search engines dont like them and neither do people. Many people will be reluctant to click on an ugly looking address.

OK, so you have analyzed the on page factors and you are ready to build your site and get it exposed.

Whats the next step? We will cover that soon!